The latest signs that California’s leaders have given up on holding PG&E accountable

With multiple criminal convictions for disasters that killed people, destroyed property and devastated communities, you might think that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. would finally be held accountable by California’s leaders. But you would be wrong.

Despite PG&E’s long record of catastrophe and failure, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California politicians been undercutting their promises to hold the company accountable, shoveling tax dollars into its pockets and leaving us all less safe.

After 85 people were killed in the Camp Fire, which leveled the Butte County community of Paradise in 2018, PG&E went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign, our diverse coalition of fire survivors, was among those demanding a new energy future that values lives over corporate profits.

Feeling the pressure, Newsom proclaimed that the era of PG&E greed and mismanagement was over. And with PG&E in bankruptcy, California had the leverage to set the terms of our energy future. But after the cameras were turned off, Newsom quietly backed down and handed the keys back to PG&E.

This month, for example, Newsom’s appointees on the California Public Utilities Commission voted to remove PG&E from enhanced oversight. The company was released from that regulatory probation despite its role in the 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County, for which the company faces further criminal charges; the following year’s Dixie Fire, which started in Butte County and became California’s second-largest on record; and, apparently, this year’s Mosquito Fire in Placer and El Dorado counties, for which the company is under federal investigation.

Last month, the utility’s quarterly report on its current “wildfire mitigation plan” again revealed that it was failing to keep up with needed repairs and inspections and to abide by its own timelines.

Despite all this, Newsom recently encouraged the federal government to spend $1.1 billion to help PG&E keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant online. And his regulators’ recent revision of reimbursement rates for rooftop solar advance PG&E’s stranglehold on the sector by reducing people’s ability to produce their own energy.

Newsom is choosing to keep PG&E in control, and the people of California continue to suffer as a result. Our homes have been burned down, our lungs have been damaged and our energy bills are skyrocketing. Yet our governor is siding with the perpetrator.

But the governor can change course. He is facing a decision this month on PG&E’s safety certificate — or, as we call it, its “license to burn” — which grants the utility access to taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to cover the costs of the fires it causes. Newsom’s appointees also have the power to initiate the process of a public takeover of the utility under state law.

Whether by these or other means, Newsom must explain how he plans to hold PG&E accountable. Paltry fines haven’t worked. Changing management didn’t work. Creating new bureaucratic processes doesn’t work. And letting hedge funds and other investors decide our energy future while California burns certainly won’t work.

The governor should revoke PG&E’s license to burn, initiate a public takeover and help usher in an energy system that serves the people, not an unaccountable corporation.